From The Marshall Project:
In late December, federal Magistrate Judge David Duncan waved an iPad in front of his Phoenix courtroom, enraged. He had just read a local news article suggesting that the Arizona Department of Corrections and its for-profit medical provider Corizon Health were gaming a system put in place to ensure adequate health care for the state’s prisoners. “There is no other way to read it,” he said. “It’s just a game to beat the judge and his monitoring program.”
Duncan has been overseeing a court case aimed at improving medical and mental health care in Arizona prisons. Parsons v. Ryan, which began in 2012, accuses the state of providing care so shoddy that it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment: delayed or denied treatment, too few doctors and nurses, referrals and medication refills that fall through the cracks.
Corizon has served as Arizona’s prison health care provider since 2013. The company is not a defendant in the ongoing legal action, the plaintiffs wrote in a court filing, because the state is ultimately responsible for providing care “regardless of who it hires.” However, the company’s care lies at the heart of the proceedings. Continue reading >>>
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